So I played a battle the other day with a friend using the new rules. We skipped the fire and crash/inertia rules for now cause they seemed to be too complicated for a first round. We played with but never attempted to do grinding damage or component damage. We both had armies with about the same CP cost (~280) but with quite different weaponry.So first I want to give you some feedback how the troops performed balancing-wise:

The first thing we noticed was that big armored vehicles are die-hards. Almost the whole army had to fire on a tank for several rounds to destroy it. This made it possible for them to roam the battlefield freely, just driving around their enemy's emplacement and picking their targets each round freely.Two tanks with each two Gun III may be able to damage each other effectively, but it would still take about 6 or more rounds for any of the two tanks to emerge as the victor. I guess this is intended, but the base CP cost for such fortresses seemed to be a little low.

Machine guns were absolutely worth their CP price. Their various firing-modi made them versatile - big targets that are easy to hit? fire some more rounds! A whole infantry squad nicely accumulated in a middle-ringfinger arc? - take them all down with only -1 to the UR! Target so-so to hit? Well, just fire one shot then.

So basically, the machine gun can convert excess of skill/boni into damage/multikill, which is a pretty mighty thing for a weapon that is only marginally more expensive and can shoot a little less far as the normal gun.

In our game, machine guns did by far the most damage and the most kills. The lower distance didn't matter anywhere in the battle.

The weapon type that was the weakest were big guns (size 3 upwards). Taken their high use rating, we thought of them as perfect anti-tank weapons. In the game however, they turned out to be pretty useless and not worth their CP price at all.My assault gun IV missed the size 6 tank about every second shot, also at almost point-blank range which looked ridiculous. When it hit, it never pierced through the tank's armour without combined fire (chance would be less than 50%). The amazing distance a gun IV can fire turned out to be much less powerful than imagined as a target of a size that a gun IV can hope to hit will never be destroyed before it closes in to a distance where other/infantry troops can engage (too many hitpoints) - so the extra range only granted the gunner one extra try to hit at most.

So their performance against big targets was mediocre/bad and against infantry about impossible.

Attacking the tank with combined fire of infantry troops proved to be much more effective as they could only miss on a 1 (due to the big size) and dealt the same damage. (4x guns I = 1x gun IV -- as far as damage is concered) Plus of course, the infantry guns could also fire at other things than big tanks. So for the only use case for which big guns were made for, they performed worse than just infantry troops.

Regarding the whole combined-damage thing

This rule makes small weapons over-powerful because actually, there is no need for big guns. It's just harder for them to hit something.As for a solution to this, the new armored-property does clearly have the intention to alleviate this problem and give big anti-tank guns a chance. But it feels more like a crutch:It is not clear to me when a tank is "armored" or "only" has a armor level of 3, or both. (From the builders perspective, ) how would an "armored" tank with armor level 3 look like, how would a "non-armored" tank with armor level 3 look like? Shouldn't it be armored everywhere (except for the weaker component-spots but which is already covered by the rules)? Isn't being armored the definition of armor level 3? - even the rulebook gives as examples for armor level 3: "concrete, mortared stone, armor plating, castle, armored tank, stone giant".

So with this property, suddenly there are two notions of armored - armor and some kind of damage consumption. This is confusing. And I can really not think of any MOC examples that should be heavily armored (level 3+) but still be vulnerable to many hand weapons fired at the same time at it. Either a shot pierces through the armor, or not, "armored" and "armor" seems to be too connected to each other than to treat it separately. Besides, there is the grinding damage rule for that.

So, in my next (test) game, I want to try out alternative rules that address these observations, but I am uncertain what I could change for that game. Here are some ideas I have but the whole sense of this post here is to get some input from you guys and especially from stubby, so please, discuss .

Remove the combined damage and "armored" rule. Burst shots of MGs count as single shots. Explosions always add up. Infantry and other troops with small weapon will have to rely on other methods to stop heavily-armored vehicles - damage components (tank's weapons, tank's tires,...), throw a grenade into the hatch, climb onto the tank and deconstruct it,... or do grinding damage, which I guess is pretty much as effective as combined damage (which is why I'm not sure if I like this rule at all - didn't try it out yet)

Connect the damage consumption with the armor level. Could be like this:

WestNordOst wrote:So I played a battle the other day with a friend using the new rules. We skipped the fire and crash/inertia rules for now cause they seemed to be too complicated for a first round.

There are a bunch of rules sections that are going to get simplified and edited down significantly once the main content is complete, Fire and crash rules among them. Anything related to field hazards and thrust rules also. I want to finish getting everything in place and playtested before I start the process of deciding what to delete.

I'm going to ask for some clarifications on some of your comments, not because I want to debate whether you're right or wrong, or because I think you're doing anything wrong necessarily, but just to make sure I'm getting an accurate picture.

(When it comes to negative feedback, I try to assume that 90% of the time it's one of two things:

6. You didn't understand the rules properly, in which case I did something wrong7. You understood the rules perfectly, but they didn't work for you, in which case I did something wrong

The other 10% of the time it's Colette complaining about Armor, and no amount of explaining will ever get him to understand it.)

The first thing we noticed was that big armored vehicles are die-hards. Almost the whole army had to fire on a tank for several rounds to destroy it. This made it possible for them to roam the battlefield freely, just driving around their enemy's emplacement and picking their targets each round freely.Two tanks with each two Gun III may be able to damage each other effectively, but it would still take about 6 or more rounds for any of the two tanks to emerge as the victor. I guess this is intended, but the base CP cost for such fortresses seemed to be a little low.

Normally this is where component damage comes into play. Against targets too strong to kill in a single round, take out their propulsion first to pin them down, and then either leave them stranded to mop up later, or take out the weapons next to de-fang them. Is there a reason you decided to stick to generalized damage instead?

Machine guns were absolutely worth their CP price. Their various firing-modi made them versatile - big targets that are easy to hit? fire some more rounds! A whole infantry squad nicely accumulated in a middle-ringfinger arc? - take them all down with only -1 to the UR! Target so-so to hit? Well, just fire one shot then.

So basically, the machine gun can convert excess of skill/boni into damage/multikill, which is a pretty mighty thing for a weapon that is only marginally more expensive and can shoot a little less far as the normal gun.

In our game, machine guns did by far the most damage and the most kills. The lower distance didn't matter anywhere in the battle.

Were you using the reloading rules? The disadvantage of machine guns isn't the range, it's the running out of ammo. Although I do want to make this a little more likely by saying any crit-fail will make the gun Inoperative, even in the first point of Arc.

I like the fact that assault weapons are vastly more useful than single-action weapons, because it's completely realistic. But on the other hand, they add a lot of dice-rolling overhead, so in practice I'd prefer to limit their usage. I haven't come up with a completely satisfactory solution to this yet.

The weapon type that was the weakest were big guns (size 3 upwards). Taken their high use rating, we thought of them as perfect anti-tank weapons. In the game however, they turned out to be pretty useless and not worth their CP price at all.My assault gun IV missed the size 6 tank about every second shot, also at almost point-blank range which looked ridiculous.

Were you using gunnery support? Aiming? Were the shots missing even when NearMisses were considered?

I've been thinking of modifying NearMiss with the following caveats:6. No matter how poorly you roll, your NearMiss distance can never be higher than the number of inches between yourself and the target.7. Except when firing at Flying targets, missed shots don't fly off into the air. (This one is kind of a big change.) They must hit another surface within the NearMiss distance.

This turns a lot of shots into automatic hits, if you're closer to a large target than the amount of inches it would take to miss it completely. In general, I'm adding a lot more automatic hits to the system (crashes, shoves, and grabs in particular), and this would be one of them.

The amazing distance a gun IV can fire turned out to be much less powerful than imagined as a target of a size that a gun IV can hope to hit will never be destroyed before it closes in to a distance where other/infantry troops can engage (too many hitpoints) - so the extra range only granted the gunner one extra try to hit at most.

This is mostly intentional, at least as far as mobile targets are concerned. Were you hoping to destroy it completely or just soften it up?

Attacking the tank with combined fire of infantry troops proved to be much more effective as they could only miss on a 1 (due to the big size) and dealt the same damage. (4x guns I = 1x gun IV -- as far as damage is concered) Plus of course, the infantry guns could also fire at other things than big tanks. So for the only use case for which big guns were made for, they performed worse than just infantry troops.

I don't know if I'd go that far - big guns are made for taking out fortifications. They are not historically very useful against mobile targets.

4x guns I = 1x gun IV, if all 4x guns hit and miss at the same time. Against tough armor, it can be more valuable to get the all-or-nothing damage; it depends what your target is. As a general rule, the system is designed so that infantry are more versatile and will be more valuable in 90% of situations, because infantry are funny all by themselves. Vehicles are only as funny as the number of infantry they can run over.

Regarding the whole combined-damage thing

This rule makes small weapons over-powerful because actually, there is no need for big guns. It's just harder for them to hit something.As for a solution to this, the new armored-property does clearly have the intention to alleviate this problem and give big anti-tank guns a chance. But it feels more like a crutch:

It is not clear to me when a tank is "armored" or "only" has a armor level of 3, or both. (From the builders perspective, ) how would an "armored" tank with armor level 3 look like, how would a "non-armored" tank with armor level 3 look like? Shouldn't it be armored everywhere (except for the weaker component-spots but which is already covered by the rules)?

A tank is never inherently "Armored," but you can build Armor Plating components on top of it (8.1: Weapon Size in the 2010 rules). Those Armor Plating components, specifically, are the only parts that have the Armored bonus.

These descriptions are left over by mistake because the Armor Plating rules were added relatively late, so I'll have to go back and edit this later. None of the Structure Levels are inherently Armored; Armor Plating is always something separate that has to be built over the top of the structure.

So with this property, suddenly there are two notions of armored - armor and some kind of damage consumption. This is confusing.

I agree about this, especially just the fact that "Armor" and "Armored" are such similar terms. I'm open to suggestions for different names.

And I can really not think of any MOC examples that should be heavily armored (level 3+) but still be vulnerable to many hand weapons fired at the same time at it. Either a shot pierces through the armor, or not, "armored" and "armor" seems to be too connected to each other than to treat it separately. Besides, there is the grinding damage rule for that.

To be honest though, no one ever really uses grinding damage. It'd be a different story if they did, but it seems to be just a little bit too much trouble for people to keep track of.

Infantry and other troops with small weapon will have to rely on other methods to stop heavily-armored vehicles - damage components (tank's weapons, tank's tires,...), throw a grenade into the hatch, climb onto the tank and deconstruct it,... or do grinding damage, which I guess is pretty much as effective as combined damage (which is why I'm not sure if I like this rule at all - didn't try it out yet)

This is the normal way for infantry to take out heavy vehicles, but they usually still need combined damage to do it. Components are only one Structure Level below the full Armor of the main structure, so they can still be pretty tough.

Connect the damage consumption with the armor level. Could be like this:

Against targets too strong to kill in a single round, take out their propulsion first to pin them down, and then either leave them stranded to mop up later, or take out the weapons next to de-fang them. Is there a reason you decided to stick to generalized damage instead?

Not really, we played it simple first. Also, I was unsure about how damaging the propulsion worked for tracked vehicles (so many tires...) and didn't want to look it up during the battle.

Were you using the reloading rules? The disadvantage of machine guns isn't the range, it's the running out of ammo. Although I do want to make this a little more likely by saying any crit-fail will make the gun Inoperative, even in the first point of Arc.

Yes. It didn't happen so often though because both of us played save and rather fired one shot less than risk a reload. In other situations it didn't matter because the firing unit was sure to be dead anyway next turn or some replacement weapon of a fallen comrade was lying around. Now that you mention it, there were several occasions where already the first shot crit-failed but I remembered the rule and continued the auto-fire. Even though it would make the autogun less powerful, I could imagine that it could be quite lame to have it inoperative right before the first shot - something in-between would be that if it fails critically on the first shot, then one can just not continue to fire this turn but it doesn't become inoperative.

I like the fact that assault weapons are vastly more useful than single-action weapons, because it's completely realistic. But on the other hand, they add a lot of dice-rolling overhead, so in practice I'd prefer to limit their usage. I haven't come up with a completely satisfactory solution to this yet.

If a normal (bastard) minifig-gun made slightly more base damage than a (bastard) auto-gun, it could make autoguns only more attractive for sizes bigger than 1.5" (heavy and upward) which in turn could limit their usage amongst infantry troops somewhat. Not sure if that is the kind of limit you want to have.

Were you using gunnery support? Aiming? Were the shots missing even when NearMisses were considered?

Yes, the one tank in one army did. (There were only 2 big tanks in the battle.)The boni of "enemy is not moving" and "gunner is not moving" came and went, we used them but didn't really use them tactically. We only considered NearMisses for explosions. Otherwise, enemies were never close enough to nearMissed targets to say that he just shot his own trooper in the battle. Or am I missing something, is there more to this rule? We played it like this: If I nearMiss a size 6" target by one, it means that the shot will land within 1" around the target but not on the target.

The amazing distance a gun IV can fire turned out to be much less powerful than imagined as a target of a size that a gun IV can hope to hit will never be destroyed before it closes in to a distance where other/infantry troops can engage (too many hitpoints) - so the extra range only granted the gunner one extra try to hit at most.

This is mostly intentional, at least as far as mobile targets are concerned. Were you hoping to destroy it completely or just soften it up?

Nope. I was just making the point that the extra-distance is not such a great advantage than it seemed to me.

It is not clear to me when a tank is "armored" or "only" has a armor level of 3, or both. (From the builders perspective, ) how would an "armored" tank with armor level 3 look like, how would a "non-armored" tank with armor level 3 look like? Shouldn't it be armored everywhere (except for the weaker component-spots but which is already covered by the rules)?

A tank is never inherently "Armored," but you can build Armor Plating components on top of it (8.1: Weapon Size in the 2010 rules). Those Armor Plating components, specifically, are the only parts that have the Armored bonus.

Well, I meant from the perspective of a MOC builder. I enjoy the building aspect of the game very much and build the vehicles first and after that look up what weapons, size, armor and propulsion they would have by the rules. I am puzzled which vehicles would look like they have armor plating and which just have a high armor level. To get a better impression of the battle we had, you should also know that 8 vehicles were involved and only 16 infantry.

Regarding ideas for names the "armored" attribute: "shielded" comes to my mind. (As in shielded against small infantry weapons)

This is the normal way for infantry to take out heavy vehicles, but they usually still need combined damage to do it. Components are only one Structure Level below the full Armor of the main structure, so they can still be pretty tough.

You are right. I fear this is why my first idea would not really work like that. At least not without reducing the armor levels in a similar fashion as in my second idea. I think I will try this for the next battle and then report in again.

Thank you, by the way, for your welcoming and encouraging reply. Our next battle is happening soon - if you would like to have some other rule ideas or changes than you already mentioned tested, tell me.

WestNordOst wrote:Regarding ideas for names the "armored" attribute: "shielded" comes to my mind. (As in shielded against small infantry weapons)

Bingo. I could totally imagine energy shields bouncing off a d6 of damage (force-fields ranging from personal to SHIPs), as energy shields are always depicted as OP and bouncing off shots (Star Wars and particularly droidekas are what come to mind), unless a lucky shot managed to hit the shield generator. It also makes beefing up a vehicle a little less outlandish and could help dig out the poor obscure force-fields section out of field hazards.

WestNordOst wrote:Not really, we played it simple first. Also, I was unsure about how damaging the propulsion worked for tracked vehicles (so many tires...) and didn't want to look it up during the battle.

Depends how the tracks are constructed, but if a track is broken we usually let it keep working until it finishes spooling out behind the tracked vehicle.

If your tracks are just made up of tires, then it's:

9.1: Standard Propulsion wrote:If attackers can destroy or disable a major propulsion component (one tire off a dune buggy, one leg off of a RoboSpider), the vehicle's Move is reduced by 1" for each lost component. If half of the propulsion elements are destroyed (one leg off a Tyrannosaurus, one wheel off a motorcycle), or if any part of the Vehicle is dragging on the ground, then the Vehicle moves at Half Speed, after applying all other applicable penalties. If all the elements are destroyed (one pogo off of a pogo stick, one balloon off of a balloon), the Vehicle's ability to Move is eliminated entirely.

something in-between would be that if it fails critically on the first shot, then one can just not continue to fire this turn but it doesn't become inoperative.

I like that as a middle ground, but it's hard to explain in-game. What would cause a gun to stop firing but still be usable when you fired again?

We played it like this: If I nearMiss a size 6" target by one, it means that the shot will land within 1" around the target but not on the target.

It misses the exact spot on the target you were aiming at (meaning it's no longer part of Combined Fire), but it can still hit some other part of the target if the target is bigger than the NearMiss. I need to add examples for this.

A tank is never inherently "Armored," but you can build Armor Plating components on top of it (8.1: Weapon Size in the 2010 rules). Those Armor Plating components, specifically, are the only parts that have the Armored bonus.

Well, I meant from the perspective of a MOC builder. I enjoy the building aspect of the game very much and build the vehicles first and after that look up what weapons, size, armor and propulsion they would have by the rules. I am puzzled which vehicles would look like they have armor plating and which just have a high armor level.

Entirely up to the builder. If you think your vehicle has Armor Plating, then you say "these components are Armor Plating," measure the Weapon Size of whichever components those are, and limit your weapons and movement accordingly. If you think your vehicle doesn't have Armor Plating, then give it the proper Structure Level and stat it as normal.

Regarding ideas for names the "armored" attribute: "shielded" comes to my mind. (As in shielded against small infantry weapons)

I was about to be a smartass and say "but then what do I call Shields (3.3) and Energy Shields (8.5)?" Then I remembered that I changed the effects of Shields and Energy Shields to just give you the Armored bonus, so changing it to Shielded is the perfect solution. You win this round.

(Actually I'm kind of super glad I asked now, because this has been bugging me for months, and that's the obvious-in-hindsight answer that I should have thought of myself.)

Colette wrote:Bingo. I could totally imagine energy shields bouncing off a d6 of damage (force-fields ranging from personal to SHIPs), as energy shields are always depicted as OP and bouncing off shots (Star Wars and particularly droidekas are what come to mind), unless a lucky shot managed to hit the shield generator. It also makes beefing up a vehicle a little less outlandish and could help dig out the poor obscure force-fields section out of field hazards.

You know what else has been depicted as OP? Tanks. Let's imagine you were facing a tank in real life. I don't know if you're imagining that tanks are built out of 20 gauge (0.04") sheet metal like cars and washing machines, or what, but armor plating is serious business. The armor plating on an M1A2 Abrams tank is 4.72 inches thick. Can you name a hand weapon that can damage 4.72-inch-thick steel plating? How about a sidearm? Is it entirely outside the realm of possibility that maybe there are targets for which you need something a little heavier than 9mm rounds?

The only thing "outlandish" is that I let hand weapons damage Armored targets on a critical success. In real life there is a 0% chance that this would happen.

Concerning Automatic Weapons:I like the open-endedness of being able to fire as many or as few shots as you want, but it does slow down and tie up the game. To remedy this, the guy I play with most often have developed a sort of unspoken rule that minifigs may only fire single shots, three-round bursts, or simply shoot until the gun runs out of ammo. This speeds up our game, because we're not debating the pointless argument of "should I shoot 2 or 3 or 4 times this turn?" I do like a 1 meaning the gun's empty no matter what firing mode, since this happens all the time on the first shot with no consequence. I also think having rifles at 1d8 damage is a pretty good incentive for using those guns instead.

Concerning Armor Plates:Armor plating should be pretty obvious; like pr0n, you know it when you see it. On a MOC, it might look like a bulldozer blade, a giant's shield, an energy projector, or side-skirting of some sort. For clarity, you might wanna make it a different color.

stubby wrote:You know what else has been depicted as OP? Tanks. Let's imagine you were facing a tank in real life. I don't know if you're imagining that tanks are built out of 20 gauge (0.04") sheet metal like cars and washing machines, or what, but armor plating is serious business. The armor plating on an M1A2 Abrams tank is 4.72 inches thick. Can you name a hand weapon that can damage 4.72-inch-thick steel plating? How about a sidearm? Is it entirely outside the realm of possibility that maybe there are targets for which you need something a little heavier than 9mm rounds?

The only thing "outlandish" is that I let hand weapons damage Armored targets on a critical success. In real life there is a 0% chance that this would happen.

The only man-portable things I can think of that would damage an Abrams are the Javelin Missile system (requires 1.5 operators) and C4... both of which would be incredibly dangerous to use on your own against a crewed tank.

stubby wrote:You know what else has been depicted as OP? Tanks. Let's imagine you were facing a tank in real life. I don't know if you're imagining that tanks are built out of 20 gauge (0.04") sheet metal like cars and washing machines, or what, but armor plating is serious business. The armor plating on an M1A2 Abrams tank is 4.72 inches thick. Can you name a hand weapon that can damage 4.72-inch-thick steel plating? How about a sidearm? Is it entirely outside the realm of possibility that maybe there are targets for which you need something a little heavier than 9mm rounds?

The only thing "outlandish" is that I let hand weapons damage Armored targets on a critical success. In real life there is a 0% chance that this would happen.

The only man-portable things I can think of that would damage an Abrams are the Javelin Missile system (requires 1.5 operators) and C4... both of which would be incredibly dangerous to use on your own against a crewed tank.

What we learned in infantry basic training: if you encounter a tank, HIDE!